Proofs of Honor
by Laura Schiller
Summary: How have you proven yourself? B'Elanna goes back to complete the Day of Honor ritual, this time ready for the question.


Proofs of Honor

By Laura Schiller

Based on Star Trek: Voyager

Copyright: Paramount

B'Elanna still felt a little awkward about the whole affair. In light of her and Tom's literally last-second beamout to Sickbay, her heroic confession began to look somewhat foolish in retrospect. Poor Tom probably still didn't know what had hit him. She wondered how she could possibly look him in the face again after this, let alone be friends.

However, there was one more thing she was determined to do. Her last thoughts floating in space with Tom (the few that were not completely taken over by him: his wry, defiant humor, his courage, her regrets over not having told him sooner) had been about the Day of Honor. How ashamed she was to have broken off the ceremony like that – it was worse than not having started at all. A true Klingon wouldn't have done it. And as her oxygen ran lower and lower and she stared into Tom's eyes behind the helmet, it had dawned on her that dying as a Klingon would not have been so bad.

Except that now she was about to live as one instead.

The holodeck doors opened with a swish. It was the same red-walled caves she had programmed – sacred caves on Qonos, actually – and the same tall, gruff, heavily armored Klingon warriors to challenge her, with their rough cranial ridges and lionlike manes of hair. For the second time in as many days, B'Elanna – small, crisply attired in a yellow-and-black Starfleet uniform, with a glossy cap of straight brown hair and the mere outlines of ridges on her fine-boned face – felt ridiculously out of place.

The challengers looked askance at her as she nibbled a slice of heart-of-targ. Klingons do not nibble; they devour the food in front of them before either a rival gets to it or it runs away. However, small bites were the only way B'Elanna had ever been able to tolerate the bitter, oversalted taste. Holodeck technology had reproduced it perfectly; she could almost hear her mother's irritable sigh. _Eat up, child, it's good for you!_

Next came the question. She had been dreading this – last time, her complete and utter mental blankness had driven her to break off the ceremony altogether. She thought she had a few answers this time – but would they be accepted?

"How have you proved your honor in the past year?" asked the Klingon, fixing her with level black eyes like a beetle on a pin.

She fought the urge to look at the floor and gazed right back instead. That was a Klingon tradition: you look people in the face when you answer them. Never show you're afraid.

To reassure herself, she locked her hands behind her back and stood at Starfleet attention. She could pretend this was just another report, and this formidable being just another superior officer.

"Well, sir, I haven't been slashing at anyone with a bat'leth, if that's what you mean. But being an engineer is no easy job either, let me tell you … "

She told him everything she could think of about Voyager's travels, and how she had held the ship's engines together with her knowledge, her unique ability to cobble together solutions where others would just give up, and sometimes sheer stubbornness.

"And just yesterday," she wound up, beginning to feel embarrassed at all this self-praise. "I had one of the craziest days of my life. I almost died."

She half-closed her eyes to sort out the events in her mind.

"It all started when a … colleague … of ours made a stupid mistake out of her own pride and we had to eject the warp core. _Then_, one thing led to another and Lieutenant Paris and I found ourselves out in space in our EVA suits, our shuttle blown up, one oxygen tank leaking and the other good for only half an hour."

She almost shuddered with the remembered horror of it, before recalling where she was.

"I admit I was scared," she said bluntly. Let them disqualify her for the next year if they liked – it was still true. "I knew we were going to die out there. Voyager wasn't responding to our hails; how could they know where we were? So there was nothing to do but face it – make it a part of me. Do you know what I mean?"

The Klingons, who did that before each and every battle, nodded soberly.

"I was going to die whether I was afraid or not, so I might as well go down fighting – fighting my fear, since there wasn't anything else."

The slightest hint of approval dawned on her challenger's dark face. Encouraged by this, B'Elanna went on.

"Ther was – something else," she said, suddenly starting to blush. "Tom Paris, my partner – he was in the same fix as I am. We had to share the oxygen … and we had to hold on to each other to keep from floating away. I – well, we'd been attracted to each other for four years. I just can't stop arguing with him – it's like a game. Only … a few things happened to me when I was a girl, and since then, I've had a hard time trusting men. Especially the playboy type, like Tom is or pretends to be. So I let him think I didn't care."

The challenger scowled.

"I know – very dishonorable, and all that. Which is why yesterday, with my last breath, I finally told him I loved him."

She felt a little flash of triumph at the memory – of forcing the words out through her laboring throat, her starving lungs, looking at him so hard, because she wanted those blue eyes of his to be the last thing she saw before blacking out. Such a relief, even then, of unburdening herself of the words that just _had_ to be said. _I love you_ … the simplest and most terrifying words in the world.

"It's not much," with an embarrassed little laugh. "But I did it. And now I'm just waiting for his answer – which, knowing my luck, will probably be a no." She grimaced at the idea of the ordeal that called up – seeing him in staff meetings and on away missions only, calling each other Lieutenant, ignoring the fact that they had ever kissed in the caves of Sakari IV. He _couldn't_ still be into her after she had kept him at arm's length for so long.

"But I'll pull though," she said defiantly, with almost Klingon bravado. "And it'll make me even stronger. I'm my mother's daughter, after all."

The challenger walked up to her slowly and stared down at her. She found that she was blinking rapidly, like a deer in the headlights. He was close enough that a punch to the chin might knock her unconscious.

Instead he reached out his armored hand and gave her a resounding clap on the back.

"You have passed this test," he proclaimed, his voice rolling through the cave walls. "The worst enemies a warrior can face are sometimes her own fears. You have won the victory. _Qapla'_, B'Elanna, daughter of Miral!"

Once she had caught her balance and her breath, B'Elanna broke out into a wide, elated grin.

_Well, whaddaya know?_ she thought delightedly, borrowing one of Tom's expressions. _Not bad for a mongrel child. If only Mama could see me now!_


End file.
